Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras conclude their triumphant Monteverdi 450 tour with FINAL concert at V&A on 15 December MONTEVERDI 450 at V&A Friday 15 December 2017 Concert to include highlights from the Monteverdi Trilogy: L’Orfeo, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, L’incoronazione di Poppea Monteverdi Choir English Baroque Soloists Sir John Eliot Gardiner conductor Soloists: Francesca Boncompagni, Silvia Frigato, Francesca Biliotti, Reginald Mobley, Marianna Pizzolato, Carlo Vistoli, Francisco Fernández-Rueda, Gareth Treseder, Robert Burt, Furio Zanasi, Krystian Adam Free admission to late opening of V&A’s Opera: Passion, Power and Politics Sir John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists conclude a triumphant year celebrating Monteverdi’s 450 th anniversary at the Victoria and Albert Museum on Friday 15 December for the only London performance of their critically acclaimed Monteverdi Trilogy. They will perform highlights from Monteverdi’s three extant operas in the Raphael Cartoon Gallery, where 50 years ago the young conductor and his newly-formed choir marked the composer’s 400 th anniversary. Attendees will receive entry to Opera: Passion, Power and Politics. The exhibition, from the V&A and Royal Opera House, is the first to explore opera on a grand scale, featuring seven seminal premieres in seven cities including Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea. The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists commenced an international tour of the Monteverdi Trilogy on 10 April, taking audiences by storm at La Fenice in Venice and at European festivals from Edinburgh to Salzburg and Lucerne. For this momentous tour, Gardiner assembled an exemplary cast of world-class singers for ‘staged-concert’ performances of L’Orfeo, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea. It also presented the first opportunity for Gardiner to conduct Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria
Transcript
Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras conclude their
triumphant Monteverdi 450 tour with FINAL concert at V&A on 15 December
MONTEVERDI 450 at V&A Friday 15 December 2017
Concert to include highlights from the Monteverdi Trilogy:
L’Orfeo, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, L’incoronazione di Poppea
Monteverdi Choir English Baroque Soloists
Sir John Eliot Gardiner conductor
Soloists: Francesca Boncompagni, Silvia Frigato, Francesca Biliotti, Reginald Mobley, Marianna Pizzolato, Carlo Vistoli, Francisco Fernández-Rueda, Gareth
Treseder, Robert Burt, Furio Zanasi, Krystian Adam
Free admission to late opening of V&A’s Opera: Passion, Power and Politics Sir John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists conclude a triumphant year celebrating Monteverdi’s 450th anniversary at the Victoria and Albert Museum on Friday 15 December for the only London performance of their critically acclaimed Monteverdi Trilogy. They will perform highlights from Monteverdi’s three extant operas in the Raphael Cartoon Gallery, where 50 years ago the young conductor and his newly-formed choir marked the composer’s 400th anniversary. Attendees will receive entry to Opera: Passion, Power and Politics. The exhibition, from the V&A and Royal Opera House, is the first to explore opera on a grand scale, featuring seven seminal premieres in seven cities including Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea. The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists commenced an international tour of the Monteverdi Trilogy on 10 April, taking audiences by storm at La Fenice in Venice and at European festivals from Edinburgh to Salzburg and Lucerne. For this momentous tour, Gardiner assembled an exemplary cast of world-class singers for ‘staged-concert’ performances of L’Orfeo, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea. It also presented the first opportunity for Gardiner to conduct Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria
which was subsequently recorded live by the SDG label during September performances in Wroclaw, Poland. MONTEVERDI 450 TRILOGY TOUR REVIEWS ★★★★★ ‘This is a living Opera, projecting thrillingly into a large space without ever losing focus or energy. […] Gardiner conducts all three with absolute authority, and his players and singers, cross-cast, work as a seamless team.’ Sunday Telegraph ‘To anyone who has been unfamiliar with Monteverdi until now, this trilogy should be heard. It will open up a whole new world.’ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ★★★★★ ‘YET another extraordinary evening of opera in the Usher Hall […] Gardiner and his superb international cast then deliver the goods, with consummate style’ Herald Scotland ‘Two hours of pure emotion distilled with wisdom, technical expertise and above all the ability to grasp all the finesse of expressive writing to the highest degree.’ Musica As Gardiner explains: ‘The full unchanging gamut of human emotions - bewildering, passionate, uncomfortable and sometimes uncontrollable - form the subtext of all of Monteverdi's surviving musical dramas. More often than not, he shows a deep empathy for his characters - including the less salubrious ones - just as his contemporary Shakespeare does. Both revelled in juxtaposing tragedy with lowlife comedy. Both men lived on the cusp of exciting, and dangerous, cultural worlds.’ The Monteverdi Choir was established in 1964 for a groundbreaking performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers at King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. In 1967, Sir John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir made history celebrating their namesake’s 400th anniversary at the Victoria and Albert Museum. For more than 50 years, Gardiner has championed Monteverdi’s music across the globe, igniting a reassessment of the composer as one of the founders of opera, who transformed the miniature form of the madrigal into full-scale music drama. REVIEWS FROM MONTEVERDI 400TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT AT V&A 29 JANUARY 1967 'The cumulative effect of so ripe a musical pot-pouri left one breathless. Especially when all was sung with such style and conviction by the choir...' The Times
'Best of all were the unaccompanied madrigals, sung with great sensitivity and with an intimate and confident understanding and anticipation of the music's quickly changing moods. John Eliot Gardiner instils into his singers both the heartless, Stravinsky-like inflexible rhythms and the Mediterranean langour and passion that the music needs.' The Guardian MONTEVERDI TRILOGY As an observer of human nature in all its forms, Monteverdi presents the full spectrum of character traits from the purest to the most depraved, obsessed and corrupt. Monteverdi’s operas invite direct comparison with the greatest artists and scientists of his age – Shakespeare, Galileo, Caravaggio, Rubens, Titian and Tintoretto. Above all, it is Monteverdi’s talent for communicating emotion through music that is the driving force of his operas, which have not lost their power through the centuries. Starting in the realm of the demigods, charismatic musician Orpheus descends to the underworld in an attempt to bring his beloved Eurydice back to life. His journey proves fruitless, as he cannot prevent himself from looking back at Eurydice as she follows him back to the living world and he loses her forever to the world of the dead. From the pastoral world of Orpheus, Monteverdi moves to the Homeric world of Odysseus in the aftermath of the Trojan War. When Ulysses, King of Ithaca, returns home at the end of a ten-year journey he finds his faithful queen, Penelope, besieged by a trio of unctuous suitors and urged by her advisors to accept a new husband. Ulysses (with both the help and hindrance of the quarrelling gods) eventually convinces her of his true identity, routs the three suitors and regains his kingdom. Monteverdi’s final opera is a celebration of carnal love and ambition triumphing at the expense of reason and morality. Set in a world of shifting alliances, formed and dissolved in the attempt to achieve amorous goals and social ambitions, the opera focuses on anti-heroine Poppea’s ruthless rise from Nero’s mistress to his acknowledged queen. In an opera of stark contrasts, Monteverdi prepares us to despise Nero and Poppea as they are satirised by two disgruntled sentry guards, and yet the ensuing portrayal of the two lovers as they exchange and entwine musical lines leaves us under their irresistible spell.
MONTEVERDI CHOIR & ORCHESTRAS Founder Sir John Eliot Gardiner
For the past half a century, the Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique have set new standards, shaped opinions and breathed fresh energy into both forgotten and established repertoire. Their founder and conductor John Eliot Gardiner has devoted more than 50 years to the study of period instrument performance practice from the baroque to romantic repertoire. The Monteverdi Choir was established in 1964 for a groundbreaking performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers at King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. Ever since the Monteverdi Choir has proven to be a powerhouse for young choral singers as many former members have moved on to successful solo careers. Memorable also was their recorded live performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers at St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice in 1989 marking the choir’s silver anniversary. For their 50th anniversary in 2014, the Choir returned to King’s College to honour their inaugural concert in a live broadcast on BBC Radio 3. The English Baroque Soloists were founded in 1978 and have - together with John Eliot Gardiner - always sought to challenge preconceptions of Baroque and early Classical music. Combining the untamed sound of period instruments, with passionate and virtuosic playing, they have set the benchmark for period instrument performance that has shaped performance practice for the last three decades. Their current leader is Kati Debretzeni. A towering achievement for the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists was marking Bach's 250th anniversary in 2000 by performing and recording all 198 of JS Bach’s sacred cantatas on the appropriate feast day in more than 60 churches across Europe. Subsequently the Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras set up the company’s record label, Soli Deo Gloria, to release the entire cycle which was hailed as “one of the most ambitious musical projects of all time” by Gramophone magazine. In 2014, Sir John Eliot Gardiner published a new biography on Bach entitled “Music in the Castle of Heaven”. All three ensembles have also been a fertile training ground for generations of performers who have gone on to shine internationally. In 2007, the Monteverdi Apprenticeship Programme was established to further develop future generations. The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists have over 150 recordings to their name and have won numerous prizes. The Financial Times described their most recent album together, Bach’s B Minor Mass, as ‘Bach at its most glorious and uplifting.’ Sir John Eliot Gardiner was appointed President of the Bach Archive in Leipzig in 2014 and has recently received the Concertgebouw Award in Amsterdam.
